Community Spirit

I am enclosing my check for $50, and I wish I had a million to contribute. I am a 79-year-old widow (for 14 years), and I live on Social Security and a very small pension. But my gratitude and love for Flannery O'Connor know no bounds. It's funny, I had just said goodbye to a luncheon guest, Jeff Blake, who is also an avid O'Connor fan, when I found your request in my mail. We had shared our books and talked about O'Connor at great length.

He was fascinated with my photos of her, and the fact that I had visited her when I was a student at Wesleyan in Macon. He asked to copy them, and I was glad to let him do so. The photos were taken by Dr. Thomas Gossett who is mentioned in The Habit of Being along with his wife, Louise, and he sent them to me during the time that we corresponded after we had both left Wesleyan, up until the time of his death several years ago, of pancreatic cancer... Read More

On family vacations, I was always the one who thought a hike in a nearby state or national park added an important dimension to the trip; my husband gamely agreed, while my two oldest children tromped resignedly alongside and my two youngest lagged decidedly behind, whining at evenly spaced intervals. So on this, my second visit to Andalusia, I was surprised yet excited to find that a walking trail had been cut through the grounds since my last visit, and I knew that was one thing I would not leave without experiencing. ... Read More

Fifty years ago this week, Flannery O’Connor died in Milledgeville, her mother Regina nearby, ever devoted.

Flannery O’Connor’s life was marked by her sharp intelligence and broad humor, even from her early years in Savannah: scrawled, misspelled, scathing book reviews written on Charlton Street; tedious piano lessons with Sister Mary Joseph, who turned her hearing aid off when Flannery played; dry bathtub readings with unwilling childhood friends as audience.

As an adult, when Flannery wrote her Iowa Prayer Journal, she didn’t realize that Andalusia would be God’s answer to her wish for purity (and publication!). Andalusia gave Flannery precious, abundant material.

The woods, if anything, she wrote, are the Christ symbol.

Flannery O’Connor’s years at Andalusia—bed to desk to window and beyond—marked a life larger than most of us can dream... Read More

Georgia Department of Natural Resources wants your input in how the state manages the white-tailed deer population.

According to a release, the meetings include an overview of stakeholder recommendations and proposed actions to take for deer management including: population density, seasons and bag limits, hunting methods, hunter access, urban deer management, education and outreach.

You can attend a meeting at Monroe County Library on Wednesday, August 20 at 7 p.m.